Run You Clever Boy
by girlinshipwreck
Summary: Sherlock comes to Leadworth to unravel an unlikely mystery, but ends up confronting something even more improbable, the impossible Clara Oswald. {AU}.


**Fortune Found **

_2008_

Clara was pulling pints at _The Wig and Cravat _when the world began to end. Her manager, Billy 'the Kid' Hancock, was loitering outside in the beer garden, half-heartedly wiping down tables and drinking the dregs of half finished drinks whenever he thought nobody was looking. (Nobody was there to look). A shadow fell across him, a very large shadow. Believing it to be a cloud, he just ignored it. But then the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand to attention one by one...

Glancing up, he saw a giant eyeball. He didn't linger to form a more eloquent description. Billy burst through the pub doors, screaming like a stuck pig, startling his few customers to the extent Portia Davis fainted at the bar. Clara thought, _bang goes Bingo Night then_, before hastily dumping the pint she'd been pulling, froth slopping over the edge of the glass and over the front of her top instead. As the pub erupted into chaos, Clara climbed onto the counter, grabbing a spare pool cue as she did so.

"Wot's 'appenin' Barry?" she shouted, mind racing through a hundred impossibilities. Giants. Dinosaurs. Cars that turned into robots -

"How-many-times-do-I-have-to-keep-telling-you-my-name-is-Billy!" her manager gasped.

"Wot do you want? Barry or Big Belly? Your choice!"

"It's the end of days!" he screamed, ignoring her ultimatum. "We're going to be killed by giant eyeballs!"

_So its aliens, then,_ Clara mused, _nothin' new about that._ She glanced at the pool cue in her hand. Well, at least she was appropriately armed. She could just poke it in the eye if it tried to carry her off or something - everybody but Clara screamed as the sound of an inhuman voice filled the air, _the human residence is surrounded, Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence, or the human residence will be incinerated._

"We're all going to die!" Leonora Sprogg screeched.

"One day, yeah, but not today, alrite!?" Clara bellowed, jumping off the counter and landing like a cat on the old wooden floorboards. "Not on my watch anyways."

She fought her way through the melee of tables and chairs and crying customers. Slipping outside, pool cue ready, she lifted her eyes heavenwards. A smile reluctantly crossed her face.

Well old Big Belly was right. It seemed to be the end of days after all.

* * *

><p>Clara and Big Belly sat in the beer garden, the former nursing a drink, the latter necking his. All Clara had seen so far was nothing. And all she'd heard so far was, <em>the human residence is surrounded, Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence, or the human residence will be incinerated, <em>until she'd snapped and smashed up the radio with her pool cue. Big Belly had stopped panicking enough to tell her, _that's coming out of your wages, madam._

The customers were still inside, hiding behind the bar, crying and praying for salvation. Big Belly had suggested hiding in the cellar until Clara had pointed out it was too _Shaun of the Dead _for her taste. They weren't up against the hordes of the undead, only a few disembodied body parts. So he'd joined her in the beer garden, steadily working his way through the Scotch with a steadiness that was a joy to behold. He needed to keep his belly in shape, Clara supposed, even during the apocalypse.

Who knew the end of days would be so boring though? Clara wanted to see fire and plague and unholy monsters besides giant eyeballs. But all she got was a tape recording banging on about a prisoner with a terrible name. Zero?

_Come on. _

She'd give this whole thing a zero - But then the sky went dark, the sun becoming a black ball of darkness and Clara smiled once more.

This was more like it.

* * *

><p><em>If I could find a way to see this straight<em>  
><em>I'd run away<em>  
><em>To some fortune that I, I should have found by now...<em>

Two weeks later, when the giant eyeballs had gone back to wherever they'd came from, and Portia Davis was dining out on the fiction she'd been kidnapped by a ten foot nose, Clara was once more pulling pints at the Wig and Cravat. Life was passing her by. And Clara did not like being passed by.

It was time to chase fate.

Just as she was thinking this, a man strode into the pub, his gaze sweeping over his surroundings, missing nothing. Not even Big Belly's untied shoelace. "Tie that up before you trip up," the man said as he brushed past her manager. Clara watched him move amongst the tables and customers, noting the grace of every turn he took. He moved like a predator, a panther. His gaze met hers briefly, questioning, intrigued, and then bored. _Panther, her arse_.

The man paused by the table of Annabelle McClure. "Your husband's having an affair with the postman," he told the middle-aged housewife, rolling his eyes as she clutched her chest dramatically with one hand. "Maybe I shouldn't tell you he's also having it off with the milkman, but wait," he held a finger up in mid-air, pretending to think, "I just did."

He then leant over the shoulder of Charlie Bean, who was sitting at the neighbouring table. "You're the man trying to outrun an ill advised career move," he said thoughtfully. "Except it's gone rather global... Even here in Leadworth. You'll never attend another tea-dance again." Charlie spat out his beer, making Clara tut. What a waste of an alcoholic beverage.

Everybody's heads turned as the man then approached the bar, whispers following in his wake. He looked like a man who knew where he was going. Quite unlike her then... His gaze swept over Clara, again apparently missing nothing. Clara could almost see the cogs of his mind turning. But she couldn't deduce what his deduction of her was. His face was unreadable. Normally she was good at reading faces, identifying chins and noses and such, but not this one...

"I want to speak to Rory Williams," the man said coldly.

Clara merely raised an eyebrow. "Who wants to know?" she asked, resuming pulling her pint.

"Me," he replied.

"An' whose 'me' when 'e's at 'ome?"

"I'm not at home, I'm here. And I'm _me_, Sherlock _bloody_ Holmes."

"An' I'm Clara _bloody_ Oswin _bloody_ Oswald," she fired back, dumping her pint glass on the counter with such force that it splashed the lapels of his fancy looking pea-coat.

Sherlock sighed heavily. It almost sounded exaggerated. Then he suddenly yanked a monogrammed hanky out of his pocket, making Clara jump. Recovering her nerve, she noted the dry bloodstains splattered across the faded white linen. And it wasn't his initials embroidered on it either. _JH_ or something. He wiped his front almost absentmindedly, more concerned with staring at her hair.

"I observe you subscribe to the colour pink," he said, disdain polluting his voice.

"Yes, I do," Clara agreed emphatically.

"The pink lady," Sherlock drawled.

"I'm not an apple."

"I was passing judgement on the shade of your hair."

"I was born with this 'air."

"Apart from it being biologically impossible, I can see your roots, which need doing by the way," Sherlock said, tapping the counter with a long finger. "When did you dye your hair? Two weeks ago? Was it a knee jerk reaction to the peculiar events that happened around that time? Or did you realise life was just too short to stay a brunette? Did you seize the moment when you seized the hair dye?"

Clara allowed herself a smile. Sherlock allowed himself a moment of deduction.

"You're not from around here, are you? You drop your 'h's, like some scullery maid. With an accent like that, Leadworth is rather tellingly out of your league..."

"I actually live in Upper Leadworth, the _classy_ part, which is somethin' I can't say you are, _guvnor_."

"Touché," Sherlock allowed. Then he placed his elbow on the counter, resting his chin on his hand. "Did you just say 'guvnor' to make a point about me and clichés, or do you generally use that phrase in your everyday vocabulary?"

"You tell me, Einstein."

"I don't know."

"Is that a first?"

"You tell me."

Clara looked at Sherlock. Sherlock looked back at her, distant yet frighteningly close all at once.

"Wot you 'ere for then? The giant flyin' eyeballs? Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. 'olmes, but they foned 'ome a long time ago. Gone to the great opticians in the sky," Clara said, pretending to shed a tear.

"Clever, but not clever enough," Sherlock drawled. "You know why I'm here: Rory Williams. You won't get any more out of me than that."

Clara pursed her lips together but before she could say anything else, Big Belly appeared behind Sherlock, his chins wobbling threateningly. "What are you playing at Clara? Mrs. Poggit wants a glass of water for her false teeth. Hop to it!"

And so Clara had to 'hop to it'. Sherlock watched her leave before straightening his scarf and making his way to a discreet corner. This was Leadworth's only nightspot. Rory Williams, twenty something young professional? Of course he would come here. And he would find Sherlock Holmes waiting for him...


End file.
